NISTAS

NISTAS – Non-Invasive Screening of the Status of the Vascular System

The NISTAS project is a two-year, €1.1M project funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme under the Research for the Benefit of SMEs scheme. Coordinated by the Swiss company Eclexys, it involves six SME partners and three Research Providers, aiming to develop a novel medical instrument – VascuLight (VL) – for fast and contactless screening of the status of the vascular system of human patients.

Project Description

NISTAS responds to the need for fast, reproducible, and widely available measurement of the arterial stiffness that is a recognized predictor of cardiovascular risk and mortality. Arterial stiffness is considered as well as a potential marker for monitoring the beneficial effects of medical treatments for arterial diseases.

Today, pressure in arterial blood is measured by contact techniques, while VL will perform contactless measurements at a local (carotid, arm and leg arteries) and regional level (combined carotid-arm/leg measurements). The measurement instrument will be based on optical technologies and will be coupled to a control unit, where fast processing will allow a prompt diagnosis.

In NISTAS, 6 SMEs will lend their expertise to the common goal of realizing the VL instrument, transferring photonic and electronic technologies so far deployed in other industrial fields to life science and medical areas. RTD Partners with clinical expertise will guide the consortium towards full clinical tests, with the goal of validating the effectiveness of the proposed method for vascular disease and risk diagnosis. NISTAS will also develop a complete path towards CE certification of the instrument, allowing an immediate exploitation of project results, supported by the planning of series production manufacturing by the involved SMEs.

The NISTAS Consortium aims at the deployment of the new VL instrument at European hospitals and points-of-care, and expects to introduce measurements techniques at the same level of health dissemination as blood pressure measurement.